The Spine (Part 5 of 7)
Alpennine Chilliewack: Langdon Beck CP3 to Alston CP4
This post follows Part 4: Ice Goes Better With Whisky
Before continuing the story, I want to take a moment to pay my respects to late ultrarunner Ed Catmur. Our paths nearly crossed a couple of weeks prior, when I partially recced this section from Langdon Beck to Garrigill. It was a tough run anyway, made no easier by the experience I’m about to recount. I hope this goes some way to explaining how remote this section of the course is, and the risks involved when conditions are poor.
The Cross Fell Recce, Two Weeks Earlier
“You’re a fucking idiot”.
He was shouting at me. Where on earth had this come from?
“You’re a FUCKING IDIOT. You’re going to call out mountain rescue, you’re going to get someone KILLED”.
Okay, this was getting seriously awkward now. The whole pub had descended into silence. You could hear a pin drop. Everyone was staring at me; the ‘fucking idiot’, apparently. But he wasn’t done.
“Someone in mountain rescue is going to die because of you, you FUCKING IDIOT”.
Just in case I hadn’t been following thus far, he leaned in closer and broke it down for me syllable-by-syllable. “You’re a FUH–KING I-DEE-UHT”. I kept my eyes fixed on his right arm, as he rotated it backwards, as if preparing to launch a punch. I prepared myself to counter. But then I spotted the muscles in his shoulder relax. If he had been considering an attack, he’d clearly thought better of it. I watched him pick up his pint instead.
A few folk resumed their conversations in hushed tones. Thank goodness too. Getting abuse from a slightly squiffy chap was one thing, but I didn’t want a whole mob attacking me. I was the odd one out here, standing at the bar in full Spine kit. And I must have looked pretty bedraggled; I’d already done 40k up Cauldron Snout and over High Cup Nick in really poor conditions.
Let me fill you in on the background. I’d just been standing here, eating a packet of crisps and drinking a bottle of apple juice, when the gent perched on the bar stool next to me asked what I was up to. When I told him I was heading over Cross Fell, he’d not liked that very much. When I tried to reassure him by explaining I was training for the Spine; well, that was when he really lost it. Sofar as he was concerned, the ‘Spine’ was immoral. It was putting mountain rescue members at risk, and shouldn’t be allowed. Then… well, I’ve told you the rest. You’re up to speed.
I considered my options, and decided to de-escalate. So I broke the ice, made a couple of self-deprecating jokes, and encouraged him to share his concerns. I learned he was a local resident who had seen many a hiker set off to climb these remote fells woefully unprepared. And he didn’t think much of anybody attempting them at all in these conditions, whether they were prepared or not.
Fair enough. I calmly explained that whilst I didn’t know everything, this wouldn’t be my first time running over a fell in snow, high winds and low visibility. In fact, I’d just come down from High Cup Nick, where conditions had been pretty savage. I was carrying no fewer than four live GPS devices, a satellite link, enough food to see me through to New Year, and enough clothing to warm an army.
As we chatted, we started to find plenty of common ground between us. My compatriot began to moderate his stance. “You do actually sound semi-intelligent” he conceded. High praise indeed. When I departed it was, I’m pleased to recount, with a handshake on friendly terms.
The weather conditions had improved considerably. Compared to High Cup Nick, Cross Fell was in much better nick. The snow had melted, and the wind wasn’t nearly as ferocious as it could have been, in what’s considered the windiest place in the country. Visibility was really poor though, and with no trail to follow through the boggy moorland, a fair bit of zigzagging was needed to maintain a line that generally tracked my GPS route.
By the time I got back to my accommodation at St John’s Chapel, it was 1am. The whole 80k loop had taken me 50% longer than I’d bargained for, which was testament to just how awkward it’d been.
Nine hours later, seasoned ultrarunner Ed Catmur set off from Dufton to attempt a similar traverse over Cross Fell. I’m not sure exactly how the weather compared, but I believe the wind was considerably stronger than it’d been for me. 9 different mountain rescue teams, comprising more than 90 people, searched for him over New Year’s Eve. He wasn’t found until New Years Day.
This was on everyone’s mind as the Spine began this year, not least mine. I would make certain I was fully kitted up before leaving Langdon Beck. If Cross Fell could catch out a prior winner of Spine Challenger, it could catch out any of us. Some of the locals obviously thought so too.
Rest in peace, Ed.
Langdon Beck
I’d been battling up the 10k riverside trail from hell for hours. Soaked, freezing, battered, tired, dehydrated, hungry and thoroughly miserable, the sight of a flight of steps up to a road was beyond a relief. The road was, of course, totally iced over, but that was the least of my worries. A volunteer ran with me for the last couple hundred metres up to the youth hostel.
Upon entering, I stripped off most of my drenched kit, which the volunteers immediately carted off to the drying room. I pattered barefoot into the main lounge, where my jaw dropped. This was no mere checkpoint. Lothersdale Tri Club, move over; this was my new heaven on earth!
The room boasted a lovely warm wooden floor. Chairs were clustered in the centre, and around the sides; apart from one area, that is. The area where a roaring log fire stood. It was the best thing I’d seen in my life.
Like the previous checkpoint, Langdon Beck offered an at-seat food and drink service. This was the self-proclaimed “curry capital” of checkpoints (my favourite cuisine, I might add), and I was provided with as much delicious dahl as I could eat. All the almighty horrors of the day were flipped right around and served back to me in the form of the world’s best recuperation stop. How could this get any better?
A crazy thought dawned on me – what about a shower? Maybe I could turn this into a spa experience! Mostly in jest, I asked the volunteers whether they had a spare towel; but without hesitation, they handed me the largest, fluffiest, snuggliest towel I’ve ever held in my life.
Now I was stumped. A shower was completely unnecessary; a ridiculous, absurd extravagance. Was I really going to shower, right now, in the middle of a race?
After everything I’d been through today – sure, fuck it! YOLO, or whatever the kids say these days. I cranked up the water temperature to scalding, filled the shower cubicle with so much steam that I could no longer see my own feet, and enjoyed the best shower I’m ever going to experience in my entire life. Utter bliss!
As I headed to bed, the volunteers were explaining to me that due to the atrocious weather conditions, runners were not being allowed to leave Dufton unless they were in a group of three. Then, I was told that we were now being held right here, at Langdon Beck.
All their words went in one ear and out the other. I’d just warmed my toes beside a roaring fire, eaten some delicious lentil dahl, unwound in a steaming shower, and now I had three glorious hours of slumber to enjoy. The weather, and the race, could wait.
Three hours later…
When I returned from my fruitful sleep to the cosy lounge room, the fire was still calmly crackling, but I had a different energy. Some of the tension and urgency of the race was back. The checkpoint seemed to reflect this adjusted reality when the kitchen staff accidentally set off the building’s fire alarm. I asked a volunteer who’d just come on shift whether we were still being held here at Langdon Beck. Since he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, I took that to mean I was good to go. The weather must be improving.
I loaded up on a jacket potato and beans while organising my gear. The weather whiteboard still warned us to expect -15C and “SEVERE WINDCHILL”, so I really took my time preparing my kit for Cross Fell. To complicate matters, lots of my kit was spread throughout the drying room, and it took a few visits to find it all. Whether I did remains an open question.
(As an aside, the smell was quite extraordinary in there. I asked a volunteer how they coped. “Oh, I can’t smell anything any more” they explained, with a sweet smile that suggested I probably hadn’t volunteered at a race such as this before).
In preparation for Cross Fell, I opted for 3 lower layers and 7 upper layers, which seemed prudent and sensible. What wasn’t so sensible was putting them all on right in front of the roaring fire. My body temperature spiked so high that I had no option but to strip everything back off in what became a near-emergency undressing! In the end, I just carried all my clothing to the kit check table, so I could re-dress when I was ready to literally head out the door.
Before I could leave, I was instructed on a route diversion. The scramble up Cauldron Snout was too dangerous in the ice, I was told. So I wasn’t to follow the Pennine Way along the river. Instead, I was to cut across a series of fields, to a track that’d lead me around to the southern tip of Cow Green Reservoir, and rejoin the Pennine Way at the top of Cauldron Snout.
Having recced this section, I did actually know what they were talking about, though I obviously didn’t know the diversion. Apparently they’d just finished laying route signage on the ground. I really hoped it was clear, because I obviously wouldn’t have a GPS track to follow.
They got me to sign a legal disclaimer to attest that I’d both understood, and would comply with the new instructions. Frankly, signing legal documents with small print some 240k into a race felt a bit much. Who knows, I could have been committing to buy a timeshare property in Barbados.
The road back down to the bridge was still thoroughly iced, and – guess what – I fell over on my hip again, which was particularly painful. But you’re probably bored stiff of me moaning and groaning about falls by now. So how about I save you from having to read about it every other sentence, and you can just take it for granted – if I’m still in the race, I’m still falling on my arse, and it still bloody hurts!
I came across the first diversion sign pointing into a darkened field. Even when I flicked to my most powerful headtorch beam, I couldn’t pick out anything to orient off of. A few sets of footprints through the snow indicated that some runners had travelled the diversion route before me. However, the footprints were not all in agreement. Either they’d got a bit lost, or it wasn’t just us traipsing through these fields tonight.
These fields were, of course, my absolute favourite – churned and rock-hard – so I walked them to save my feet. This gave me time to look up and fully appreciate the stunning night sky, unadulterated by light pollution. I briefly turned off my headtorch and basked in the starscape. It was one of those magic moments, and brought me full-circle back to the start, when I’d been pondering the scale of the universe, and indeed this race.
Despite how sheltered I was from the wind down here, I was still wearing all 7 upper layers, along with 2 hats, gloves and mitts. If I needed all this gear down here, how bad would it be when I reached Cross Fell, I wondered? Sofar as I knew, we still had to leave Dufton in threes for safety reasons. I hoped they’d drop that rule before I got there. I’d much rather go alone; and besides, there could be a very long wait for two more runners.
The diversion popped me out onto a road that climbed steadily, but gradually enough to permit a good running pace. I would have made better time had I not kept dropping my mitts when I removed them to eat. A couple of times I had to backtrack quite a long way to find them, which was really quite dispiriting. On the plus side, it wasn’t long before I spotted the head of Cauldron Snout, and the bridge I’d crossed in my recce. I was back on my GPS track, and felt all the better for it.
The night was extremely cold, but perfectly still. There were 6-12 inches of snow up here on the fells, and the same few sets of footprints that I’d seen earlier. Between the still night, the peace & tranquillity, and the minimalism of the snow-covered fells, I was thoroughly enjoying myself up here. I found myself slipping into a meditative rhythm, as I quite literally followed in the footprints of my forerunners.
I was eating well too. Of course, my flasks were frozen as per usual, but this time I defrosted the caps so I could unscrew them and at least drink from the beakers. I even ran a couple of experiments to see whether I could defrost my softflask nipples to get the things fully working again. I couldn’t, but it’d been fun trying.
The lower descent from High Cup Nick broke out onto road, which of course was well-iced like all the others. I made very cautious progress down here, until I found myself closely inspecting the icy tarmac again, in yet another really hard fall onto my hip. Sorry, I said I’d skip these descriptions didn’t I – moving along…
The sky was lightening as I entered Dufton. The view from the town is really quite stunning, as it sits at the foot of quite a collection of imposing fells. And with everything covered in snow, the scene looked particularly special. These are literally the scenes our Christmas cards are made of.
Incredibly, the Post Box Pantry café was open at this hour, quite possibly especially for us runners. I felt very grateful, but I was doing well enough on my sports nutrition to push straight past to the CP3.5 monitoring point at Dufton village hall. Inside, the radiators were on full blast, pumping out so much heat that the cavernous room felt like an oven. I ordered a tea on autopilot, but immediately regretted it. With 7 layers on, I was absolutely boiling in here, and a steaming cup of tea wasn’t going to help!
“Are we still being grouped into threes?”, I asked, sweating profusely under all my gear. The volunteers shook their heads. Thank goodness! That made sense too; the sky was clear, and there didn’t seem to be any appreciable wind, despite that “SEVERE WINDCHILL” warning at Langdon Beck. When I got my tea, I downed it as quickly as possible, so I could get out of the oven and back into the arctic. I didn’t want to have to strip off all my clothes again, like I was a performer on the Full bloody Monty!
As I departed, one of the volunteers issued me a friendly warning. “It’s mighty slippery out there, so be canny”. Be canny. It was an unusual turn of phrase, and despite my being more than aware of how slippery it was, that phrase stuck with me. Be canny. I’d certainly try. Never let it be said I was anything but canny…
By my recollection from my recce, I had 7k to go up to the top of Great Dun Fell, then 8k along Cross Fell to Greg’s Hut, another 8k back down to Garrigill, followed by a final 7k or so easy to CP4 at Alston. When I broke it down like that, it didn’t sound like much, really.
The climb up Knock Fell was awesome fun. With the effort of the ascent, and the emergence of the sun, I no longer needed my full arctic gear, so I paused near the top to remove a couple of layers, and pose for a selfie. The smile was genuine.
Beneath the clear blue sky, the sun’s rays bounced straight off the pure white snow that caked the fells, affording them a beautiful lustre. Underfoot, the snow varied between 6-30 inches in depth. In other words, conditions were absolutely epic!
I snapped a few photos of the immense vista – the Lake District fells to my left, the Pennines to my right – but I deliberately avoided taking a panoramic photograph. No camera could properly capture the beauty of what I saw. That perfect image would be stored exclusively in my memory.
The snow-capped peaks transported me thousands of miles away to the Alps. Sure; these fells were decidedly squat compared to the likes of the Matterhorn, but if I squinted and engaged the creative side of my brain, I could almost convince myself I’d just run up from one of those ski resort towns nestled in between the mountains. I never imagined I’d see a view like this from within the English borders. In recognition of its outstanding natural beauty, I decided to name this region the Alpennines. Ordnance Survey, Google Maps – take note, please. I expect to see this on your next editions.
Beauty aside, progress through the Alpennine snow was tedious. I felt as though I was in communication with these few earlier runners, the owners of the feet that had left these useful depressions in the snow. I debated the route with them. We frequently disagreed which was the right way to go, so I’d often need to break fresh snow. This took an awful lot of energy. My foot would drop 12 inches, where it would pause, only to break through another layer, and fall another 12 inches or so. It wasn’t exactly my normal ‘running gait’, put it that way.
Where I absolutely nailed the route and passed directly over the top of the Pennine Way’s flagstones, the snow was shallower and the going much easier. But nailing the exact path over meandering flagstones buried far beneath the snow, that was more luck than judgement. I only hit them every now and again.
My feet were getting pretty chilly, spending so long as they were buried deep within the snow. As you know, I was only wearing a single pair of socks. But I found that so long as I kept moving, my feet remained just about warm enough. I was never too worried about them.
At the summit of Cross Fell, I took a minute or two to revel in what was the perfect Alpennine panorama. I could see the whole range of fells from here, and they all looked so simple, so minimalist. Other than the odd summit cairn, there was absolutely nothing to disrupt the outline of their form. Not a tree, not anything. I could hardly believe this was the same remote, boggy, mountainous landscape I’d recced a fortnight prior, when there’d been just a few metres visibility. It bore no resemblance whatsoever.
I felt so privileged to be able to experience this incredible place, at this most perfect of times.
Now that I’d summited Cross Fell, I just had a very slow, but otherwise simple enough descent ahead of me. So my focus switched to the chilli sauce. Yes, the chilli sauce. This was one of the key factors that had cemented the Spine in my mind as a must-do Legendary Triad race. And I was only a kilometre or so away from it!
I should probably explain.
One of the most famous Spine traditions stems from a legendary chap called John Bamber. He traditionally mans the mountain bothy on Cross Fell known as Greg’s Hut for the entire duration of the race. For any weary souls who wander in seeking shelter, he rustles them up a noodle dish to his own secret recipe. If they’re brave enough, he adds a dash of his own homegrown, homemade chilli sauce, which he calls Chilliewack. John’s Chilliewack is reportedly hot enough to blow your Dexshells off.
As a chilli fanatic, the prospect of sampling some awesome homemade chilli sauce atop a remote fell was too exciting an opportunity to pass up. The Spine had to go on my Legendary race list. I wouldn’t say I was running Spine just for the chillies, but… well, maybe I was.
I bounded down the side of Cross Fell as fast as I could through the snow. But I skidded to a halt when something large and out-of-keeping with the environment leapt into view over the horizon. I could make it out now – it was a quad bike, with snow tyres the size of small planets. I stared, transfixed by its mini-monster truck proportions. In just a minute it had already disappeared out of sight; probably destined to resupply Greg’s Hut, I reasoned. I dropped down onto its path, and barrelled along in its tyre tracks, readying myself for my pilgrimage to the birthplace of Chilliewack.
Through Greg’s Hut’s antechamber, I crossed its main room, and entered a shadowy third chamber. In the corner sat a metal table, cluttered with food containers and metal noodle dishes, all dimly illuminated by the light from the single window. Two medics, and the legend John Bamber himself, huddled around a central stove.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I spotted a plastic container on the corner of the table that was labelled “Chilliewack Spine 2024”.
I took a seat on the wooden bench, and introduced myself to John. He explained he wasn’t much of a chilli head himself, any more than he was a runner, but he did enjoy growing them. When I asked for his Chilliewack without noodles, he seemed thoroughly confused. But he obliged nonetheless, and presented me with a spork, and his legendary jar of ‘wack.
“Let me get my camera”, he said, as he fumbled around preparing his gear. He seemed to be expecting fireworks.
But I didn’t wait. I plunged my spork into the blood-red chilli blend, and took a big mouthful. The ‘wack was tantalising; fresh, sharp with bite, mouthwarming. Notes of cracked black pepper tingled the tastebuds, while sesame oil balanced the heat. It was a dangerously moreish taste sensation. A wide smile broke over my weary face. This was what life was all about. I took another mouthful, mindful I ought to leave some for the runners after me. Well, a little. All most people wanted was a taste, right?
After some cajoling, I persuaded John to reveal his secret Chilliewack recipe. It’s simple, as most great recipes are. I may, at some point, try making my own chilli sauce to John’s recipe. But it won’t be ‘Chilliewack’, because that’s more than just a recipe. It’s John’s own chilies, prepared by John’s fair hand, served by the man himself, in Greg’s Hut, during the Spine. It’s a unique and memorable part of the Spine experience, and long may it remain that way.
Before I left, one of the medics conveyed the weather forecast to me. Today was Wednesday. Thursday was looking pretty good, Friday was looking really bad, and Saturday even worse. “I’d better get a move on and finish before the weather turns”, I thought out loud. My original plan had been to finish on Thursday. Between the ice, my feet, and my general lack of focus, the best I could hope for now was to finish on Friday. And between you, me and the four walls of Greg’s Hut, it was looking more like I’d run into Saturday. So this vague but punchy weather forecast was my wake-up call to hunker down and start treating this like the race it actually was.
Most of the track down to Garrigill was good running. Unfortunately I did spend a fair bit of that running backwards, to retrieve mitts that I was dropping with depressing regularity now. It was starting to get silly.
As ever in this race, the good running didn’t last for long. The final descent was really badly iced. It brought me to a complete standstill at times, while I tried to work out how on earth to negotiate it. There was no avoiding some of the worst iced sections, where I… well; there’s no need to spell it out, you know the drill by now. My poor hip!
In my head, the last 7k stretch to Alston checkpoint was just a road run. Simple, safe and fast. I’d be tucking into the famous Alston lasagne within the hour, I promised myself. As usual, I was wrong on all counts.
The first half of the journey to Alston was officially diverted due to some bridge repairs. To my dismay, this diversion was through my old nemesis, the rock hard farmer’s fields, and these ones seemed particularly bad. My run switched to a walk, and then no more than a cautious hobble, as I desperately tried to save my feet from further injury.
While the scenery down in this valley was beautiful, bathed in the last of the late-afternoon sunlight, progress was painfully slow, and simply downright painful. My hopes of making it to Alston within the hour were thoroughly dashed. Instead, my goal shifted to trying to make it there before dark. Not for the first time, it would prove to be the last 5k to the checkpoint that was the hardest and most miserable.
I distracted myself from the pain in my feet by planning. My biggest decision was whether to sleep or not. If I slept, I’d feel refreshed and rejuvenated for what I understood to be a more runnable section to Bellingham. The flipside was that it’d delay my finish, probably into Saturday, and into the worst of the weather (not an appealing prospect when you’re talking about the remote Cheviot hills). On the other hand, if I didn’t sleep, I would save time, but I’d be risking sleep deprivation on the most runnable section. That could be disastrous if it slowed me to a walking, or a wayward staggering/hallucinating/zombie pace.
Also in the mix was the fact that Alston was a youth hostel with proper sleeping facilities, whereas the final checkpoint, Bellingham, was more of a sleeping-bag-on-a-notoriously-cold-floor affair. If I thought about the remainder of the race as a whole, it made much more sense to sleep at Alston than at Bellingham.
Honestly, I probably knew I was going to sleep at Alston; but I kept mulling it over nonetheless, using the debate as a distraction from the pain I felt with every single step on these frozen trails.
Current issues aside though, this had been a pretty good section overall, I thought. Not fast, because of all the deep snow, but a reasonably solid performance given the conditions. I was well over halfway through the race, and assuming I could get myself over the next hurdle to CP5; well, it’d be game on then!
Yes, it was starting to come together. I just had to be sensible at this checkpoint. Play it cool. Make good decisions. Take your time. Don’t screw it up now.
Famous last words.
Continue reading: Part 6: Sound The Alarm
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